Thursday, April 25, 2019

The Genetics Behind Height

In an article published in Nature researchers discuss the genetics behind individuals heights, and what genetics processes might be responsible for its inheritance. What researchers know from sequencing the human genome about 20 years ago was that about 80% of a person's height is determined from the genes, but they are still unsure of what parts specifically are responsible for this. Several studies that attempted to find the variations responsible for height were only able to find little changes rather than a significant chuck, which led many to believe that there may have been something wrong with our knowledge of genetics. Researchers continues to look into what they called the missing heritability for height, and what was found was that though using processes like Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) to search for rare SNPs that aren’t commonly studies in GWAS, and found that these are most likely where the genetics of height lies. These researchers sequences about 6 billion bases between 21, 620 people and found that what was previously believed about the genetics of height was actually rather true, that the heritability of height was about 70%.  


I think this article is rather interesting because I feel like it is such common knowledge that your height is an inherited trait that you get from your family, but while that's true it is a much more complicated genetic process than many people know. I know for my family the genetic inheritance of height is rather obvious as none of us are over 5’8”. I also think that it’s fascinating that we really don’t know that much about the specifics about how exactly height is genetically passed down.

6 comments:

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  2. Height is always interesting when speaking in terms of genetics. Personally a lot of members of my family are all very tall and I'm above average height myself. I find it weird that something that seems so simple is actually quite complicated and that not everything is just based on genetics for height. Hopefully, with more research they'll be able to figure out the additional 30% that determine others height. I think that this research could be influential for people that have achondroplasia.

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  3. I think that it is common knowledge that height is inherited, but not everyone knows the exact genetics behind it. I found it interesting how 80% of an individual's height is determined genetically. I read in an article mutations can play an important role in height determination. For instance a mutation in the FGFR3 gene can result in a short stature. Because height is polygenic trait it's difficult to predict how tall a child of 2 people could be. I think it would be interesting to learn more about the different genes that influence height.

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  4. You are so right; it is really interesting how it is common knowledge that height is heritable, and yet it is not common knowledge that the actual genetics behind height inheritance is so complicated. I would have thought that height of all things was a subject that had already been studied thoroughly in genetics. It does make me wonder what the rest of the 30% that attributes to one's height is.

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  5. I agree with these comments. As mentioned before height is clearly hereditary, but what fascinates me is the fraction of it. What makes up the remainder that isnt. Thats almost saying its genetic, but at the same time totally not. Really looking forward to seeing more on this.

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  6. Most people if not all, we do believe that height is an inherited trait. I always blame my mother for being short, it makes sense since she is short and my grandparents were short as well. But, according to this article, this is not completely true. One detail that I noticed when I moved to United States and I was only 14 years old, is that other teenagers were way taller than myself. I do believe that height has to do with the environment where we grow up

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